observations on questioning and research during independent reading

One thing I've noticed is that students are really engaged to research. Olajuwon, Jaymon, Tyshaun, and Donte are constantly asking me if they can research during independent reading. I wonder what gets them so psyched for it? As this GR group was reading, they were asking questions that definitely showed they're starting to move up Bloom's taxonomy and ask higher order questions. Tyshaun: Is this an important date? Rashad: Why do they love to hook up their spaceships to others? I'm seeing them stop and think a lot more about: -what Apollo 11, 10, 9, etc. were, and why they are named that way -why they do countdowns before lifting off -how astronauts train -the purpose of rockets and where they go when disconnected -what creates gravity Guided reading group Illinois (Shimya, Antwanay, Sunshine, and Brianna) came up with these questions about the same text: -Why do they have to practice in a fake spacecraft? -Why did they have to hook spacecraft onto other spacecraft? -Why is it so important for them to go to outer space? I notice that this group asked understanding and analyzing questions. It's so much better that they're coming up with these questions because they're a lot more invested in finding their own answers. There's a lot of ownership here. Students will also frequently return to questions: Kayla inferred that Libby was older than another character in her Judy Blume book because in the text Libby was worried about going to 5th grade. I was so pumped when she told me this during a conference during independent reading because she had brought up that question with her partner readers the previous day. So she must have been reading and intentionally looking for the answer to that question so that she could better understand the text. Along similar lines, Shimya said: "I know where they're going (points to map on back) but I want to know what they do at these places, what do they find, what's the mystery?" Alex has 2 pages of great questions about Edward Tulane

All of these examples show how questions can be a critical scaffold to understanding of text. It gives them more of a purpose and focus as they read the text, it prompts them to investigate and really think about what they read. Riana: We were making a timeline because we didn't understand some of the stuff so we went back.